> BTW, I finally just put the archos in my lap for the remainder of the
> trip and it worked flawlessly.

So I see you've enabled the Owner Proximity Detection function!

It's a sort of anti-theft device. If the Archos had been much further away
from you than the passenger seat, it probably would not have worked at all!
The stickers on mine read "This device protected by OPD! It will not
function more than 1 meter away from it's owner, so don't even bother trying
to steal it you jerk!"

LOL! (just kidding, you know)

On a serious note: How fragged is the disk? I would imagine that could
have some effect on vibration tolerance, but what you describe sounds pretty
serious, so it may only be a contributing factor.

I use a utility called Crackup to check on fragmentation quickly without
running a defrag utility. You can get it here: http://tinyurl.com/2l9s It
works fine with the USB drive.